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Horrible Neighbors Jun 18, 22:48

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Before I begin I’d like to thank everyone who wished me a happy birthday in the last entry. So thank you Amanda, Li, Sarai, Brent, Cheryl, Tracey, Nan, Skye, Belinda, Jenny, Tracy, Katje, Vera, Laur, Britney, Amber and Adriane. You guys are awesome :)

Is there anything worse than a bunch of neighbors getting together to discuss a problem affecting the whole neighborhood (a serious health risk, that is)? Okay that’s actually not bad, but you guys haven’t met my neighbors yet and I know for a fact that most of them went.

Bit of background information: My parents are renters, don’t ask long story, and we live in a house owned by my fathers former employers (the county hospital). The three houses to the left of us are also owned by the hospital and everyone else on the street owns.

Neighbor 1: Lives to the left of us and is on sick leave all the time because of her arm. The entire hospital staff hates her and has tried to prove time and time again that she is faking it (unfortunately it’s an “injury” that is near impossible to actually prove so she gets leave with pay). Her son, in his 20’s, is creepy, unwashed and lazy. He used to like to watch me when I went to take the dogs out, particularly at night if I was wearing a nightie or nightie and robe.

They refuse to cut their lawn and prefer to let the weeds grow to about knee-high, not really a problem for us because we cut our lawn once every other week, but the pollen from the weeds (which she uses in place of grass) bothers my father, brother and I and we can’t stand it in the summer.

Neighbors 2: Live to the right of us. Their children are demons from hell, but they’re actually very cute little kids. They just enjoy chucking balls at our windows whilst rattling them (their driveway is quite close to the side of our house). They constantly knock the satellite dish out of alignment thus rendering us TV’less and start screaming and chucking in the wee hours of the morning. Very cute kids though, I want to eat them.

The husband isn’t too bad actually, last year when our lawnmower broke he wouldn’t acknowledge us until we bought a new one and cut our grass. But he redeemed himself by being nice to us (a rarity in people these days) and so I can forgive him that. I don’t know his wife though, there is an older woman who I believe is the Grandmother and she always waves and shouts hello.

Neighbors 3: Live across the street. You know that creepy house in the neighborhood where the peeping tom lives? Usually that’s my Grandfather, but in this neighborhood it’s that woman.

We’ve had to install blinds in the front windows of our house which are closed, or at least only open halfway, most of the time because she sits in the door of her house looking in at us. I’d walk across the upstairs hall in my towel (just out of the shower), look out and there she’d be, sitting in her door. She watches my sister during the day in her room. Katie has flipped her off a few times so it’s all good.

Neighbors 3: These are the people I really can’t stand. The mother stands in the street, on her front lawn, or in her driveway screaming at her three children who are usually off playing down the street, sometimes in the front yard. It wouldn’t be so bad if she were just shouting “Billy, it’s dinner time so come home now!”, but no, she’s screaming and shouting obscenities up and down the street at her three small children.

It grates on my nerves, sure my parents swore at me all the time and I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been yelled at. But not once ever did they shout “Get you f***ing a** back here you little b**terd!!!”

Don’t get me wrong, I still want to see that cell phone tower gone, but getting together with most of those people makes my teeth grind and inevitably my jaw starts to ache. It’s not that I don’t like people, although I do value my privacy, it’s that I would prefer to not associate with someone who doesn’t bathe often, a peeping tom, demon children whose sole goal in life is to wake me up before I’m ready to get up, and another peeping tom who may or may not still be peeping on me still.

At least they’re better than the neighbors we used to have. The old Hungarian woman who chased my brother with a broom when he was small (he wouldn’t come out of the house for a month), the “Catholics”[1] whose last name no one could ever remember, the Flashes, so named because of the flash of the binoculors (he was the neighborhood peeping tom). His wife was always very, very nice. She died not long after we moved in, though.

1 I don’t have anything against Catholics, my Grandfather was Irish Catholic and in spite of leaving the Church I’m sure he still holds a soft spot in his heart for it (he was raised by penguins ;)).

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